The prior and currently operating LoJack® or similar type missing vehicle location and recovery systems, as above mentioned, while highly successful in practice, have not heretofore been well-adapted to incorporate location information from GPS or other radio-navigation vehicle location systems (Loran-C, etc.) as a supplemental aid to the speed of the vehicle recovery, for reasons later detailed. Their utility, moreover, has been limited generally to the coverage of the VHF localized networks constructed for the system. These tracking VHF networks, as detailed in the said patents, cooperate with VHF transponders hidden in a customer's vehicle and responsive to commands or interrogation from the VHF broadcast antenna towers of the network, seeking periodic coded reply transmissions that can enable police and other law-enforcement vehicles to radio direction-find (RDF) by homing-in on the periodic vehicle-coded replies from the vehicle transponder.
In summary, current systems of this character generally operate as follows. When a vehicle equipped with such a transponder is lost, the owner reports that fact to the local police department which, in turn, reports to a central network computer station system for checking against a subscriber (FBI) list; and if a match is found, a computer message will be sent that includes a unique activation code and a unique reply code for the transponder of the stolen vehicle, and a description of the vehicle. This initiates the transmitting of the activation code from a series of VHF network radio broadcasting tower transmitting antennas, thereby causing the stolen vehicle transponder, if in the area or sector, to activate with a certain probability. The activation code is broadcast periodically until a report is received that the car has been retrieved by tracking police cars or until some predetermined time interval has been exceeded.
The frequency of the VHF network broadcast transmitters is the same as that of every vehicle transponder; namely, for example, a nationally assigned VHF law-enforcement frequency. But each unique transponder transmitter transmits a digital coded response or reply of say about a 10th of a second, periodically and preferably at pseudo random intervals, as from once every second to once every 10 seconds, roughly.
A police or other tracking vehicle, appropriately equipped with a direction-finding antenna system and a tracking receiver and display, when within the range of the missing vehicle, will display on an indicator panel the coded response received from the vehicle transponder; for example, a five-digit alphanumeric code corresponding to the code assigned to and transmitted by the vehicle transponder, as described in said patents. When the police officer sees that display, the officer calls into the radio dispatcher. If it turns out that this is a vehicle that has been stolen or that is otherwise desirable to track, the sector network broadcast transmitters will be activated to send out a different transmission distinguished from the first activation signals to the vehicle transponders that represent a request to increase the periodicity or rate of the vehicle transponder periodic responses or replies. The second, step-up or speed-up reply-request command signals for the same vehicle identification number, is provided in the command section of the message, causing the speed-up, as opposed to just turn-on, all as described in said patents.
When the vehicle transponder receiver receives this increased rate command signal, the transponder circuits will cause the transmission of the coded reply or response message signal from the transponder vehicle to be accelerated to a faster rate of transmission, say about once per second, so that those in the tracking vehicle, instead of seeing the coded number once every 10 seconds on the display, will see it once every second or so to aid in homing-in. The transponder will stay in that speeded-up mode for a period of time, say 30 minutes, and then automatically return to the regular mode of transmitting, say, once every 10 seconds; the expectation being that within a half-hour, the vehicle ought to have been recovered.
In more recent equipment, the accelerated mode is operated immediately, and then reverts to the “slow” mode after half an hour, after which a speed-up command can be broadcasted, as above described, to cause the unit to speed-up again (as for half an hour), etc. The initial accelerated mode, say once every second, is also particularly useful for the supplemental GPS location functions of the present invention, as later explained.
Further techniques have been developed by said assignee to enable the vehicle owner to get an early warning of the possible theft of the vehicle rather than by personally having to find a vehicle missing from the location where the owner parked it. Among these is remote sensing of unauthorized vehicle movement (U.S. Pat. No. 5,917,423) which may be noted by up-linking communication from the vehicle to the VHF tower networks, such as through the methodology of U.S. Pat. No. 6,522,698. Provision has also been suggested for using the owner's voice locally to arm and disarm a vehicle (U.S. Pat. No. 5,704,008) and for communicating panic or emergency alarms or “hotwiring” of the vehicle. Battery power conservation during extended quiescence and for low current operation has also been provided (U.S. Pat. No. 6,665,613). The use of a single phone for location assistance, preferably making use of the existing cellular phone network also for data communication, is under development—(U.S. patent application Ser. Nos. 6,876,858 and U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/622,278, filed Sep. 14, 2000, now U.S. Pat. No. 6,847,825). Supplemental national LoJack.RTM. type information coverage is anticipated when the basic VHF network system is used in conjunction with the cellular (GSM) network to achieve a measure of national coverage (U.S. patent application Ser. Nos. 10/150,818 and 10/241,259).
As earlier stated, however, while GPS has been widely used in vehicles, it has not heretofore lent itself to full integration with the VHF LoJack® type (or similar) vehicle theft recovery systems in which all transponder and radio communication modules must operate on a common much lower (VHF) frequency and must be miniaturized and randomly concealed and secreted in the vehicle, effectively undetectable by the would-be thief bent on disabling the same. The reasons for this are part physical and part economic. Clearly, the antenna exposure requirement of GPS receivers and the relatively high frequency and weak signal thereof, work against concealment from the would-be thief. Secondly, the added cost of separate GPS reception at the vehicle of GPS vehicle-coordinate information from the GPS navigation satellite constellation complex and then the provision for transmission of the same from the vehicle, have worked against the concept of very miniaturized low-cost vehicle recovery apparatus.
Underlying the present invention, however, is the discovery of how to integrate miniaturized GPS reception components within the miniaturized LoJack® type vehicle VHF transponder module to meet both of the limitations above-described, and simultaneously to provide a hybrid solution that can provide supplemental location-on-demand GPS information over the “highway” of the VHF network, not only to aid in the stolen vehicle function, but also to offer location-based services to the vehicle-owner customers by way also of the Internet. This has been aided, in part, by the recent technical developments in providing GPS integration with cell phones; but the invention has gone much further in adapting such for the somewhat different and more stringent random concealment requirements of vehicle-theft VHF transponder components and integrated GPS components, among other unique requirements. Such hybrid integration and specialized modification of concealable VHF transponders and GPS receivers integrated in novel fashion with the VHF transponder, furthermore, serendipitously uses the LoJack® or other VHF tracking network system in conjunction with cellular “GSM”, for example, to achieve a measure of wider-even national-coverage. In the form, for example, of a basic LoJack® type VHF unit with a plug-in cellular module, the invention provides for various levels of coverage, as described, offering nationwide location-on-demand services without the requirement of having to build out national VHF network coverage. The architecture of the invention, furthermore, also provides a readily available interface for “telematics” companies that may wish to add the stolen vehicle recovery capability.
With a hybrid integrated approach of the invention, indeed, there may be provided all (or any combination) of a) early warning of unauthorized vehicle movement together with vehicle location and recovery; b) GPS assistance in the stolen vehicle recovery; c) vehicle Geofencing; d) emergency occasioned by door-unlocking or other tampering; and e) vehicle location-on-demand and related services.
Objects of Invention
A principal object of the invention, accordingly, is to provide a novel method of and system and apparatus for expanding the current localized VHF missing vehicle law-enforcement-assisted recovery networks with location-on-demand supplemental service features, including GPS information, via such VHF networks, for improved law-enforcement-aided recovery, and also, where desired, for added customer supplemental service features via the Internet.
A further object is to provide a novel VHF transponder-GPS receiver hybrid miniaturized apparatus with adaptability for concealed vehicle installation in vehicles and the like.
Other objects will be described hereinafter and are more fully delineated in the appended claims.